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Question about elevation of antenna indoors...

612 Views 8 Replies 7 Participants Last post by  goldrich, 
H
I'll be using a indoor antenna, hoping this radio shack one works good as I've heard good things about double bow tie antenna's...

http://www.radioshack.com/product.as...%5Fid=930-0998



Anyways I have a small wide closet in my dedicated home theater room where my audio rack is inset into to and is where I plan on putting my indoor antenna...


I use this small closet like area to also run all of my cabling and stuff as to hide it and it makes it easy to work around my audio rack...


The height of the closet is 8 foot and 12 foot wide though narrow in depth...



How much of a difference will it make if I just set the antenna on the floor versus if I built a shelf up high to hoist it up more toward the 8 foot ceiling ?


Anybody played around with one out of curiosity ?


99% of all the DTV compliant stations are directly north of me around 20 miles or so...


Also I have one channel that is in the VHF range, has anyone lucked out and been able to receive VHF channels on a UHF only antenna ?


Thanks for any feedback,

HK
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::: crickets chirp :::


:(
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It makes a big difference, but indoors reception is tough (unless you are very close to powerful transmitters) regardless due to reflections and fine wire mesh in stucco walls. The only way to get good reliable reception is getting the antenna at least near a glass window pointed in the direction of the broadcast towers.
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There can be no reliable basis for estimating the benefit of a small change in the location of an internal antenna. If you can't get acceptable reception in the closet, then your choices are to keep the antenna in the room where the TV is so that you can finagle with it as you switch from channel to channel, or mount it on the roof.
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YMMV, but higher is almost always better, everything else being equal. When I was setting up my antenna on top of my entertainment center, there was a very clear elevation break - any lower than where I have it now, even by six or nine inches, and I can't get WBBM-DT 3 (which is marginal to start with). Where it is or above, I'm fine. Of course, it all depends on your particular situation. The only way you'll know for sure is to try it in different orientations and locations and see what happens.
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For me here elevation was everything. Antenna on top of TV resulted in unwatchable reception. I then ran coax into my basement and hooked into a feed of coax that was unused and ran the antenna to an upstairs bedroom. This resulted in a marginal improvement. I then placed the antenna on a shelf very close to the ceiling in the bedroom and got pretty good reception. I now have the antenna installed in my attic. It is probably only about 6 feet higher than it was in the bedroom but I now get everything without any dropouts and strong signal strength on all OTA stations.


I am about 20 miles south of the antenna farm in the Philadelpha area using a small antenna similar to your double bow tie.
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Quote:
Originally posted by HaloKnight
... How much of a difference will it make if I just set the antenna on the floor versus if I built a shelf up high to hoist it up more toward the 8 foot ceiling ?


Also I have one channel that is in the VHF range, has anyone lucked out and been able to receive VHF channels on a UHF only antenna ?
Generally higher is better, but not always.


If I use an indoor antenna, I have one low power UHF station that can only be received if I lay the antenna on the floor! Any other location in the room will not work.


Also, getting the antenna away from electronic equipment helps, too.


UHF antennas will sometimes work for highband VHF channels. Channels 7-13 are highband VHF. For lowband VHF (chs 2-6), you'll probably need a lowband vhf antenna, which usually has very long elements. Example: a rabbit ear dipole antenna with the elements mostly to fully extended.


As usual with OTA reception, YMMV
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Thanks for all the helpful comments... :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by arxaw
Generally higher is better, but not always.


If I use an indoor antenna, I have one low power UHF station that can only be received if I lay the antenna on the floor! Any other location in the room will not work.
 [/b]
A few years ago I had the same situation with a local UHF station just 5 miles away when it was operating at a lower power. The only place my indoor antenna would reliably receive the station was when it was sitting on the floor.......IN MY BASEMENT! I believe most of the problem was due to strong multipath. Since then the station has increased its power and I'm using an outdoor antenna setup with no problems.


Steve
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